Information and communication: Alternative uses of the Internet in households

this article, we make a conceptual distinction between a preference for information and entertainment as compared with a preference for interpersonal communication. We operationalize this distinction by comparing people's use of the World Wide Web with their use of personal electronic mail (e-mail). This operationalization is not perfect. When people use Internet services---the World Wide Web, electronic mail, Telnet, Usenet groups, MUDs, and so forth, they may be finding out the weather in the Bahamas, downloading games, chatting with friends, learning about hobbies, or sending coworkers a report. A single session on the Internet can fulfill multiple information, entertainment, and communication goals. Nonetheless, the World Wide Web and e-mail are the most popular of all Internet services and most distinctly represent people 's preference for information and entertainment as compared with their preference for interpersonal communication, respectively. Our prior research (Kraut et al. 1996, Table 2) suggested that use of the Web and email are sufficiently independent of each other to have some distinctive causes and effect